Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev

GORKI, May 30. /TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday he approved "a new version of the country’s defense industry complex development program for 2016-2020."

"We are currently engaged in reequipping the whole army, the Armed Forces, the Navy with new samples of weapons, there are certain targets to meet and certainly, it is necessary to ensure competitiveness of our products worldwide," the prime minister said at a meeting with the deputy prime ministers.

According to him, "Russia has been performing fairly well in selling armaments in the world - we are the second country supplying arms in such large volumes to the international market." "We should maintain these positions," Medvedev said.

According to Medvedev, "The program envisages the development of the defense industry enterprises’ innovative potential, improving the competitiveness of their products, further industrial production growth, promotion of Russian military products on the world markets, as well as issues related to the salary of employees of the defense industry complex." "We need a modern defense industry, which can satisfy the needs of our military, that is, implement the armaments supply program", said the prime minister.

Talking about the competitiveness of Russian weapons, Medvedev said that success on the global market can be achieved only with an advanced military-industrial complex. "Now it’s impossible to deceive anybody - either the major countries or that which had been formerly called third world countries, that is, developing economies - they all want to get advanced products," the prime minister said. According to him, "So we should produce exactly this kind of military products."

The prime minister instructed Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to control the implementation of the new program.

Defense industry program for 2016-2020 to get over $25 billion worth of funding

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin reported at the meeting that budget funds worth 1.67 trillion rubles ($25.33 billion) would be allocated for the implementation of this program. "The total amount of the budget allocations will reach 1.67 trillion rubles," Rogozin said.

According to him, the program envisages measures for the support of the defense industry complex, in particular, enterprises working for the defense industry complex, human resource development, import substitution of the military products that had previously been imported from the NATO member countries, from the European Union and Ukraine. In addition, the program envisages scientific assistance to the defense industry, which will make it possible to improve technical performance of the existing armaments. Another important element of the system, according to Rogozin, is gas turbine manufacture for the Navy and aviation.

"We are currently on the threshold of the creation of new samples of aircraft, including civilian ones. Formerly, even within the Soviet Union the gas turbine manufacturing industry was located in Ukraine. Now we are starting full-scale production of such engines that even the Soviet Union did not manufacture," Rogozin told the prime minister.